


I'll sing you a song of the long ago

by AquitaineQueen24



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Alternate Universe - Phantom of the Opera Fusion, Basically the plot of Phantom of the Opera set in the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre, Bells, Charter Magic, F/M, I like to be fanciful, Necromancers, ancelstierre, and pretend that this happens about forty or so years before the main plot of Sabriel, duels of song, eventually, lot of singing, mogget will almost definitely show up, old kingdom - Freeform, who knows Terciel (Sabriel's dad) might show up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2471342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquitaineQueen24/pseuds/AquitaineQueen24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her father had promised he'd send her a guide from beyond the Ninth Gate, a Shining One, to teach and watch over her. It had been a comforting joke between them, little more.</p><p>Oh, Daddy. Send me your guide now, for there is a monster at my back and the bell tolls for me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll sing you a song of the long ago

**_Prologue_ **

Christine looked at the well-trodden dirty snow all around their tents, the yellow hollows where the guards and various party members had relieved themselves during the night, and decided to gather some snow from  _outside_ the diamond of protection surrounding the camp.

She hoisted the metal tub higher on her hip and made her way over to the West mark, nearest the river. Just in case.

Peytar happened to be keeping watch near the Western edge, and raised an eyebrow as she reached the golden line in the snow; she gestured to the tub in reply, unwilling to pull down her scarf and expose her mouth to the still freezing air in order to speak. Clearly Peytar was also unimpressed with the quality of the snow within their camp, and nothing out there had worried him too greatly during the night. He nodded and let her lift the West mark to slip through without comment.

Once outside the diamond Christine began to shovel snow into the tub as fast as she could, crushing and packing it down to get enough in. She didn’t want to stay outside the diamond’s walls for too long while the sun still hadn’t appeared over the trees, even with the small protection of the river at her side. If only they could have camped on the frozen surface itself rather than on the bank, she’d have felt more secure - but Professor Valerius and Daddy had agreed that the ice was growing thinner and might well not take the weight of the party now.

Late winter in the Old Kingdom – which meant, according to Mama Valerius, who constantly sighed about such things, it was now probably spring verging on summer in Ancelstierre, on the other side of the Wall further South. Unfair, unfair,  _so_  unfair that, right now, ignorant Ancelstierrans were enjoying the free flowing rivers and streams, the long days and short nights that kept the Dead and the monsters at bay, when they didn’t even  _need_ them!

Still, soon she and Daddy wouldn’t need anything to ward off the Dead or Free Magic creatures either; they’d simply enjoy the summer heat for its own sake. Soon they’d be in Ancelstierre, they wouldn’t have to cast a diamond of protection every single time they stopped for the night, they wouldn’t have to hide from birds for fear they were Gore Crows, they wouldn’t have to constantly keep Charter marks at the backs of their minds in case something attacked. They could live without fear, they could devote their time to music as Daddy had always so longed to, Daddy might even stop wheezing.

While they were still here, though, she needed to cook porridge for breakfast, make some tea from the precious rationed store, wash her body bit by bit – and perhaps her hair too, if she had time – pack up her things, and get ready for another day’s journey.

Christine hoisted up the packed tub again and turned – not to go back to camp where others were already stirring, not just yet, but to look along the bank on either side of her for an instant; to check if there was anything watching from the shadows of the trees on the opposite side of the river. Not that any Dead thing would be able to cross the water that still flowed under the ice, but relaxing your guard in the Old Kingdom could mean worse things than death. Even a random passer-by could turn out to be more than they seemed, whether a Free Magic sorcerer or a necromancer.

Finally she looked at the ice, lightly dusted with a small fall of snow during the night. Willing it to melt soon,  _soon,_  for spring to come so that the Valeriuses could  _finally_  go home to Ancelstierre with their findings about the Old Kingdom, and she and Daddy could go with them as promised.

Then something moved under the ice.

Other people might have screamed or sworn, thinking a Dead Hand had somehow gotten trapped under the ice and was pounding through to get at them. But Christine had seen what happened when a Dead thing met running water; generally there wasn’t much left of them after the silver sparks, golden fire and screams died away. It wasn’t a Free Magic creature either; if it were, even from here the hot metal smell of such a being would be obvious. It was probably a fish, uncaring about the human clumping about on the bank since it thought she couldn’t get at it.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing at all, though, having fresh fish to liven up what rations they had left.

Christine put the tub back down and crept to the very edge of the bank, never taking her eyes off the movement, preparing Charter marks for stillness and silence, for ice and cold. Fire and blasting were not forces she was good with, and the last thing she wanted was to attract the attention of anything out there with a lot of noise, but she could always freeze the water around the fish if she timed it  _just_ right, and then take her time cutting it out.

She crouched, pulled down her scarf to blow the snow away so she could see the fish clearly, and stopped when she saw it wasn’t a fish at all. It was…

She didn’t really know  _what_  it was.

She swept the snow away with her hand, now she didn’t have to be so careful about her movements – to see a gap where the ice stopped being ice and became something  _else_ , something that parted to let her see beyond it, and down into a huge chamber. A room that wasn’t  _under_  the ice either; it was as if the ice were the ceiling of a building and she were looking through a window to the perfectly dry, palace-like chamber inside, filled with what seemed thousands of people. Was it like this, to peek over the Wall that divided the Old Kingdom from Ancelstierre and witness a whole other world?

It wasn’t just  _like_  that, though!

She leaned forward. Snow was soaking through her skirts and mittens and getting to her skin but how could she care about that, when she could see Ancelstierre? It  _must_  be Ancelstierre. She had never seen clothes or styles like these anywhere in the Old Kingdom, not even in the capital Belisaere where there was still some prosperity. The cavernous room was lit not with Charter magic but with what seemed to be gas lights, just as Mama Valerius had described, make the jewels around the necks of the ladies sparkle; the brightest light of all was shining on a stage on one side of the enormous chamber, shining on a girl, a woman.

Christine had seen her own reflection several times, but at first she didn’t recognise herself. It didn’t help that she seemed to be at least twenty, dressed in gorgeous clothes, covered in strange paints and with her Charter mark covered up, but as their eyes met, one all unaware and maybe not even real, she knew herself.

_The Sight._

The Christine on stage raised her arms up, out and to the ceiling (to her _audience_ , the Christine watching suddenly knew) and began to sing - no, she continued to sing, she was clearly in the middle of a performance, her words piercing through the frozen water and into her watcher’s lungs heart and soul. Christine choked on the icy air at the sound of the voice,  _her_  voice, her voice not as it was now but as it might be. Could be,  _would_  be.

_The Sight. I have the Sight, I-_

“Christine? Are you-”

A hand clapped down hard on her should and _now_ she screamed, falling forwards and nearly smashing through the ice and down into the room and her performance to fall shrieking to the floor below, only the room and her future were gone and there was only still hard ice, a bitten cheek and blood in her mouth.

“What are you  _doing_ , girl?” Peytar asked from above her, sounding less concerned and more annoyed now. She nearly spit the blood out onto the snow, then thought better of it and swallowed before muttering that she thought she saw a fish and was trying to catch it.

What with the annoyance and concern, Peytar had no room left for sympathy. “Why don’t you worry about making breakfast with what we have _before_  trying to add to it? Go on, get back to camp now!”

Should she have told him about what she saw? Peytar was from the Old Kingdom too, and wouldn’t scoff at the thought of seeing the future in a patch of ice t _he Sight oh oh I have the Sight_ but she doubted he’d care overmuch about the fact that little Christine Daae might possibly become an opera singer one day.

* * *

 

She waited until Daddy was up and shuffling about and she, now in dry clothes and with still damp hair, could push a mug of hot tea into his hands. She had to cry out for him not to drop it when he made to fling his arms about her.

“Oh, my sweet girl. My darling. Oh Charter, what a day, what a glorious day! The Sight! The Sight, and you only just eleven, how splendid! We must tell the Valeriuses, at once!”

Christine had rather hoped they  _wouldn’t_  tell the Valeriuses. Not that she wanted to lie and hide things from their benefactors, not  _exactly_ …but she had rather hoped she could keep this as a glorious secret between Daddy and herself. For a while, at least. And she hated to think that they might not believe her. They believed in Charter magic, of course, Professor Valerius had even asked to be baptised into the Charter not long ago, but seeing the future might be a bit too much for their Ancelsterrian minds to take in. They might ask her to do it again, as proof, and she would have to admit that she didn’t know  _how_  to.

But in the end the couple were told, and they did believe her. Or at least they could tell that Daddy believed her, and thus bowed to his far superior wisdom in the matters of Charter magic. Mama Valerius did ask, “Is it common, then, this ‘Sight?’”

“Not very, in most of the Kingdom. Only the Clayr have it in any great number, and they all live up in the North in their Glacier and almost never come down,” Daddy babbled, too happy for once to care that he’d have to talk about Mama. Christine’s mother had been born and raised in the Glacier, but her Sight had always been weak and, once she’d left her home (after some quarrel she would never tell her daughter or husband the details of) the Sight came to her less and less. Still, listening to Daddy ramble on, Christine remembered the times when she’d caught Mama staring into a frozen water trough or bucket for just a bit too long, before she’d sigh and break the ice.  If that was what she’d looked like while staring into the river just now, no wonder Peytar had gotten worried.

It was really just as well the Valeriuses had been told; Daddy Daae would never have been able to organise her surprise without their help. When the party stopped that night to make camp and have dinner, Christine was seated at the head of the table where Valerius usually sat, and they presented her with a new white shawl that Daddy had been saving for her next birthday, and one of Mama Valerius’s necklaces that had hastily been reworked into a circlet for her to wear on her head. If they had been able to do this  _properly,_  Daddy said, drawing on the limited knowledge he had of the Clayr from snippets his wife had mentioned about her kin, it should have been a white gown and a circlet of silver and moonstones. Christine was perfectly happy with her soft wool and silver and amethysts instead.

Then Professor Valerius wanted to know more about the Clayr, and Daddy proceeded to tell him all that he could (not the same as all he  _knew_ , of course) while saying again and again that it really would be no use trying to go and see them, believe me, they’re  _very_  secretive, and Mama Valerius hugged and kissed Christine, and the guards who were from the Old Kingdom like Peytar patted her on the shoulder and said all sorts of nice things, and the party members who were from Ancelstierre, like Valerius’s secretary, said congratulations while looking quite confused about it all but were really very kind, and at some point Daddy had gotten his violin out which was the best present she could imagine and she sang and the violin sang and they were all so happy.

When Christine finally got sent to bed she couldn’t sleep for the joy of it! Not so much having the Sight, because although it might help in the months to come it really wouldn’t be of much use to her when they crossed the Wall: just as the strange creations from Ancelstierran workshops fell apart in the Old Kingdom, magic rarely worked in Ancelstierre, and that presumably included the Sight. But in the future she had Seen that she would be on a stage, she would sing like one of the Nine Bright Shiners, Daddy would be so pleased and proud.

Of course, just because she Saw something didn’t mean it would actually happen, as Daddy had warned her; the Sight was notoriously temperamental, and really needed several Clayr to focus the vision in order to make it truly reliable. But she wouldn’t think on that.

“I will sing,” she told herself instead, remembering the shine of the gaslights on diamonds.


End file.
